I just got back from a trip to Minneapolis, the second week away in a month–and at planting time! No more.
This morning I pulled the covers off the only "greenhouses" that actually made it through the winter without major damage, and here’s what I found:
The tiny lettuce (yeah!) are in a bed on the alley that I kept protected all winter because when I did that last year, I pulled off the plastic and row-covers in the spring to find that young chard was already growing.
This year when I removed the covers I had nothing save one incipient spinach and some very dry dirt. I’m speculating (why not?) that this is one situation in which one does want to wet the bed, and that I didn’t do so sufficiently.
I’d prepped the soil last fall, so a couple of weeks ago between trips I planted alternating rows of lettuce and finger carrots. The plan (there’s actually a plan) is to harvest all this stuff in late June and plant out tomatoes that I’ve kept until then in pots.
I try to rotate crops, and it’s this bed’s turn to take on tomatoes. The big pine(s) east of it (you can see their trunks at the top of the first photo) keep it from getting sun until afternoon, but as the sun moves south at the end of summer this area gets more light, longer, than just about any other part of my garden. So the tomatoes should do okay, I think.
The square bed above is one I also kept covered all winter, more successfully. Those taller things with the white tips are leeks about to flower (I think),
and there’s creeping flox already in flower, and the bushier greer things featured on the right are something that I’m not quite sure about. They resemble stock, though it’s so long since I’ve seen stock that I could be seriously mistaken. I suspect it’s a weed whose small white flowers really don’t compensate for its size.
Any bets out there?
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